(3) _Character of the Biblical Cosmogony, and general Views of Nature which it Contains or to which it Leads._--Much of what appertains to the character of the revelation of origins has been anticipated under previous heads. We have only to read the Song of Creation, as given in the last chapter, to understand its power and influence as a beginning of religious doctrine. The revelation was written for plain men in the infancy of the world. Imagine Chaldean or Hebrew shepherd listening to these majestic lines from the lips of some ancient patriarch, and receiving them as truly the words of God. What a grand opening to him of both the seen and unseen worlds! Henceforth he has no superstitious dread of the stars above, or of the lightning and thunder, or of the dark woods and flowing waters beneath. They are all the works of the one Creator, the same Creator who is his own Maker, in whose image and shadow he is made. He can look up now to the heavens or around upon the earth, and see in all the handiwork of God, and can worship God through all. He can see that the power that cares for the birds and the flowers of the field cares for him. He is no longer the slave and sport of unknown and dreadful powers; they are God's workmanship and under his control--nay, God has given him a mission to subdue and rule over them. So these noble words raise him to a new manhood, and emancipate him from the torture of endless fears, and open to him vast new fields of thought and inquiry, which may enrich him with boundless treasures of new religious and intellectual wealth. Imagine still farther that he wanders into those great cities which are the seats of the idolatries of his time. He enters magnificent temples, sees elaborately decorated altars, huge images, gorgeous ceremonials, priests gay in vestments and imposing in numbers. He is invited to bow down before the bull Apis, to worship the statue of Belus or of Ishtar, of Osiris or of Isis. But this is not in his book of origins. All these things are contrivances of man, not works of God, and their aim is to invite him to adore that which is merely his fellow-creature, that which he has the divine commission to subdue and rule. So our primitive Puritan turns away. He will rather raise an altar of rough stones in the desert, and worship the unseen yet real Creator, the God that has no local habitation in temples made with hands, yet is everywhere present. Such is the moral elevation to which this revelation of origins raises humanity; and when there was added to it the farther history of primeval innocence, of the fall, and of the promise of a Redeemer, and of the fate of the godless antediluvians, there was a whole system of religion, pure and elevating, and placing the Abrahamidae, who for ages seem alone to have held to it, on a plane of spiritual vantage immeasurably above that of other nations. Farther, every succeeding prophet whose works are included in the sacred canon,